Improvement Insights Blog
Trying to Save Money on Software Can Kill Your Six Sigma Results
Consultants and trainers keep trying to save money on Six Sigma software while charging a small fortune for training. Without tools to to the job, all of this training is wasted and improvement projects will fail to sustain results. Are you trying to save a few dollars on software or maximize the results from Six Sigma?
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I’ve been eternally frustrated over the last 20-something years because Six Sigma trainers and [others] will go out and train companies, spend weeks training people in a company, but then not give them the software to do the job. “Well, can’t we just download your 30-day trial of the QI Macros, Jay?” And I say “Well, yes you can… but are you just trying to save a few dollars on software, or are you trying to maximize the results from Six Sigma?”
“I’m telling you if you don’t give people the tools to do the job, they won’t do it. So what have you done? You’ve wasted all that time and energy and money training people and that’s a massive waste. You can buy QI Macros for a few three hundred dollars… guess what? You can make everybody instantly productive. Give them the tools to solve the job. It’s not that hard. If not mine, buy somebody else’s [software]; you’ll spend a lot more money than you’d spend on QI Macros, but guess what? Those people are going to need those tools to do the thing you’re training them to do.
“Maybe you don’t believe in your training, you just want to get paid for training, and “We don’t sell software, we just sell training.” Shut up! Okay, you want to make those people wildly successful. Why? Because if they’re wildly successful, they’ll tell their people and you’ll get more business. This is not a complex equation, all right? This is not hard.
“Then the other thing too: if you’re a Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt, once you work with a team and make improvements they’re going to have to have some way to sustain that improvement. They’re going to need control charts, they’re going to need stability analysis, they’re going to need stuff like that to sustain that new level of improvement. If you do not give them tools to do the sustaining of the improvement, guess what? Six months later it’ll be gone and you should not have even bothered to do the improvement project. Waste, waste, waste! So if you train people but don’t give them the tools, that’s waste. If you [train] a team but you don’t give them the tools to sustain the improvement, [that’s] waste. All right? It’s just waste! Just stop doing it! Don’t train anyone, don’t do any improvement projects. Stop! It’s wasteful.
“It’s not that I want to make more money; I want people to be wildly successful, because what’s my outcome? A hassle-free America, hassle-free healthcare. The only way we do that is we give these people the tools they need to do the job. I mean, you wouldn’t send a plumber out without a wrench and a screwdriver. You wouldn’t let an auto mechanic do anything without a wrench and all the other tools they need to do these things. With modern cars, all of them have computers in them; so you need specialized equipment to be able to tune the car, right? We wouldn’t expect a mechanic to do this work without tools; you shouldn’t expect people to do Quality Improvement or the sustaining of the improvement without tools.
“So that’s my Improvement Insight for this week: Give people the software they need to do the improvement and sustain it, otherwise don’t bother training, don’t bother improving, you’re just wasting time and energy that could be spent some other way.
“Let’s create a hassle-free America, hassle-free health care. Let’s go out and improve something this week.”
